“Hair swept up. Haven't touched your cake. Probably drumming your fingernails on the white linen tablecloth, the way you do when you're really feeling down. Perhaps looking at those nails thinking: 'God, I should have stopped in all my evil plotting to have that manicure, but it's too late now.”

“Just because you're going to be alone now doesn't mean the world stops turning. You'll keep writing in your notebooks and when you're grown up and you publish your first novel, I'll be first in line at that bookstore, getting an autographed copy.”